Bruce Baber (1
Apr 2011)"REASONS I BELIEVE THE
CLOCK STARTED TICKING IN 1948"

Have
you ever awoken a minute or two before the alarm went off? You laid in
bed and stared at the clock through droopy eyelids as the seconds
ticked away... waiting for the moment when you knew you had to get up.
Well that time is now and the last remaining seconds are ticking away.

Matthew 24:34 "I tell you the truth, this
generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have
happened."

I believe, as do many commentators, that
this
prophecy of Jesus tells us that one generation will see all of the
events of the last days.

So how long is a generation? Psalm 90 vs. 10
says: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor
and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Seventy years... perhaps eighty, though it
is
unlikely. That's how long a generation can last. Notice the last words
in Psalm 90 vs. 10. "...and then we fly away." I don't think that it is
just poetic language. I think it will be literally true.

I believe we can know for sure that we are
the
last generation. Let's look at prophecies. The last fulfilled prophecy
prior to 1948 occurred in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the temple.
Matthew 24 says, "And Jesus went out, and
departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him
the buildings of the temple.

2And
Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto
you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall
not be thrown down."

From history we know that Jesus' words came
true when Roman soldiers tore down the temple in 70 A.D. And then the
prophecies grew silent for 1,878 years. Not one single prophecy saw
fulfillment in all that time. Before you start leafing through books,
or try racking your brain to think of an exception, let me say that
there indeed were events that had biblical significance prophetically.
However, not one literal fulfillment of a specific prophecy until 1948.
I think that's why so many churches stopped preaching and teaching the
prophecies.

As everyone knows the Jews became a nation
in
1948 in miraculous circumstances. By becoming a nation in "one day",
they fulfilled Isaiah 66:8. "Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen
such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or
shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she
brought forth her children."

Leviticus 26: 7,8 says. "And ye shall chase
your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

8And
five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten
thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the
sword.

Within hours of Israel's declaration of
independence in 1948, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded
Israel. The combined population of those countries was at least 20
million people. Israel had fewer than 1 million Jews. Even so, the Jews
won the war and expanded the size of Israel by 50 percent. The Jews won
a miraculous victory with a handful of antiquated weapons and a few
soldiers against vastly superior forces.

Did you know that another prophecy was
filled
concerning the Jews in 1948? The rebirth of their ancient language
fulfilled Zephaniah 3:9. For then will I turn to the people a pure
language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve
him with one consent." The Hebrew language as we know it today had been
a dead language for centuries. Yiddish was spoken by European Jews and
it was a mixture of different languages. In the early 1900s, only a few
Jewish scholars had any knowledge of original Hebrew. Up until the
state of Israel declared pure Hebrew the de facto language of the
nation in 1948, it was an unfulfilled prophecy.

What else has happened in the span of this
generation? The Ethiopian Jews returned to Israel. Zephaniah 3:10 says,
"From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of
my dispersed, shall bring mine offering."

There is more. Isaiah 27:6 says, "He shall
cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and
bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." The land of Israel was
a dry and barren desert. A wasteland!

Mark Twain's visit to Lebanon,
Syria, and the Holy Land in 1867 was published in "The Innocents
Abroad", where he described Palestine as follows:

"..... A desolate country
whose
soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent
mournful expanse.... a desolation.... we never saw a human being on the
whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree
and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost
deserted the country." (The Innocents Abroad, p. 361-362)

Today
Israel is the fruit basket of Europe. Fruit is one of their leading
exports in one of the fulfillments of prophecies that have occurred
since 1948.

In 1967, we
all know what happened in the fulfillment of a prophecy. The Jews
reclaimed Jerusalem. Zechariah 8: 7,8 says, "Thus saith the LORD of
hosts; Behold, I will save my people from the east country, and from
the west country; And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the
midst of Jerusalem: and they shall be my people, and I will be their
God, in truth and in righteousness."

Prophecy
after
prophecy started being fulfilled in the years since 1948 wheras before
that eventful year the Bible was silent regarding fulfilled prophecies
for almost two thousand years. It was like God started a countdown.

Wars and
rumors of wars, distress of nations, roaring waves, earthquakes in
diverse places... they are all happening with greater and greater
frequency. I haven't even listed all of the prophecies that have been
fulfilled since 1948.

If you agree
that the end-time countdown might have started in 1948, then add
seventy years for the span of this generation and you come to 2018.
Subtract the seven years of tribulation, and you can see that the most
likely window for the rapture is the spring of 2011... providing that
you believe in a pretribulation rapture.

We can roll
over and pretend that these things all just a coincidence. Or you can
believe that we will go through hell on earth during the next seven
years. Or you can accept the fact that Jesus is coming very, very soon
to call us up to meet Him in the air.

I can't make
the alarm clock ring any louder. It is time to get up. The time has
come. The waiting is nearly over. Pray for the Holy Spirit to fill you
to overflowing. The Bridegroom is coming. Be ready! The next event on your
horizon is either hell on earth, or life with Jesus while we
join Him paradise and wait for Him to establish His Kingdom.